ABSTRACT
Narratives of the past are perhaps necessary in all collectivities that seek to constitute themselves as such. Before the modern nation–state, however, these narratives not only embedded differences and contestations but also bore a relationship to universal or cosmological time. The emergence of the modern disenchanted polity converged with the rise of competitive states that viewed all resources and bio-power in their territory as susceptible to mobilization. The chapter argues that the reified idea of linear histories of the state, nation and civilization was crucial for this mobilization, but that ironically it became regnant at a time when the world was globalizing more actively than ever and when these very histories were being shaped by circulating global forces. While the historical enterprise of collective formation remains important for local, national or regional community building, this enterprise can no longer afford to deny the cosmopolitan circulations that have enabled and conditioned the former, particularly because planetary sustainability is at stake. Early modern circulations, particularly in Asia, are useful for thinking about the present because particularist perspectives of the past were not usually in contradiction with either local or universal ends; state territoriality and culture were not conflated. In this context, the author also brings up the question of whether the early modern is a prelude to the modern or is rather a distinct era with different possibilities.
